Political commentary from the LA Times

Don't call me a slut, Meghan McCain demands

October 17, 2009 | 5:38
am

It's Saturday. After traveling thousands of miles and raking in millions of donor dollars, both of the country's top Democrats have taken the day off. And we should too.

But before anyone reveals that Meghan McCain has her own line of underwear coming out this fall, we have to re-express our delight at the sight -- not so much of her cleavage (which, frankly, hon, we hadn't noticed until someone else pointed it out) -- but of the refreshing spontaneous spunkiness of a young woman apparently enjoying experimenting with life so much.

We're always looking to peek behind the scenes of politics here on The Ticket, to see how the pieces interact, the process unfolds, and to have some fun whenever possible.

Most days, gotta say, the fun part is hard duty given the stuffed suits offering their prefabricated pontifications and canned talking points on reams of policies and legislation that they haven't read.

Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell may well be the funniest family members at their Thanksgiving dinner table. But stick those Senate party leaders in front of the ubiquitous microphones arrayed on Capitol Hill, and no one needs any Benadryl to doze.

Which helps explain the naked media coverage of the 24-year-old's flaunted ...

... sexuality. The other day, as we reported here, McCain posted a self-photo of herself bulging out of a tank top. Perhaps you've already come across that photo at the top of this page.

There were almost audible on-air and online gasps from the aging uncles and aunties in the broadcast media, who, poor things, do have a lot of airtime to fill with something, anything contentious. That day they had no balloon boy or Limbaugh outburst to fret over. What was this famous woman doing? What was she thinking? What does it say politically? And morally?

Virtually every society has celebrities of some sort. The unwritten contract is, they usually get very rich and in return we get to pass personal judgments on their fables and foibles because it's so much easier, more fun and safer than actually confronting our own.

The daughter of last year's Republican presidential candidate, she too is a maverick and has had previous run-ins with tut-tuts over outspokenness. She expressed dismay at this recent cacophony of clucking over the partial exposure of her chest and, then and there, swore off of her Twitter account, which has about 72,000 followers. (Her father has almost 1.5 million.)

First, McCain tried to publicly puzzle out the oversize reaction to a black-and-white photo that's a whole lot less explicit than some other Twitter pages that someone who knows a friend of a friend of ours said are out there.

"Could it be," McCain asked, "it's because I have breasts? Because for those of you who didn't know, I have two. They're larger than some women's and not as big as others. I don't usually show off my cleavage — as I did in the photos I posted — which I will admit is not the smartest thing I have ever done. But it’s just not worth the drama it caused."

Bingo!

"At the end of the day," she added candidly, "I am a work in progress. I am not perfect and have never given anyone the assumption that I am. I turn 25 next week (10/24) and I am still adjusting to the glare of the spotlight and making mistakes."

"I'm not giving up my Twitter just yet," McCain promised. "I'm just going to be more judicious in how I use it."

Fine and dandy. Given the lurid behavior of some other celebrities whose videos and lack of underwear escape our mind at the moment, McCain's photo through a mirror looks pretty darned innocent. We wish her well on this journey of self-discovery. And hope from time to time she'll let those with an interest continue to share her serendipitous forays.

Happy birthday in advance.

And we note, absolutely free of both clucks and tuts, that perhaps the biggest thing wrong with McCain and that generation of hers is that we're not part of it.